Bags Made From Conveyor Belts Move Your Stuff In Style

If you didn’t know, you’d never guess what these bags are made from: The material is nondescript. In fact, it’s something most products shuttle over at some point—a rubbery conveyor belt.

From a specialist Dutch company called Kazmok, the bags include a briefcase, shopper bag, trolley bag for travel, and accessories like belts and iPad sleeves.

The material comes from the flower industry, postal depots, distribution centers, and the recycling industry, and there’s currently no danger of running out. "The challenge is to sell all the products we potentially can make," says Kazmok’s founder Dinand Stufkens.

The range won a prize at last year’s Red Dot Awards, in Germany. Judges praised the handmade bags, which are fabricated from rubber and PVC, for being "extremely durable but also unique in terms of color and texture."

Stufkens sees the bags as a metaphor. They refer to "throwaway culture," while offering a solution to it. "We decided to transform the conveyor belt, because it is a symbol of mass production and consumption," he says. "But, first of all, we want consumers to buy them because they are beautiful."

One advantage: Amid all the near-identical bags on the baggage carousel, you won’t have trouble spotting yours.

Ben Schiller is a New York-based staff writer for Co.Exist, and also contributes to the FT and Yale e360. He used to edit a European management magazine, and worked as a reporter in San Francisco, Prague and Brussels Continued